All,

As I began my last post, merely my opinion, and that historical use of these terms provides little help as there has been no single set of rules to guide the naming conventions of those conflicts.

Will violently agree with anyone who suggests that many conflicts that are widely referred to as "Civil Wars" are in fact some form of insurgency. On that note, the American Revolution is much more an English Civil War than the "English Civil War" was.

Note that the causal factors (which Mike, Rex, et al, I define in my paper and use consistently IAW those definitions) for Civil War are often the same as the causal factors for Insurgency. The difference comes then in how those conditions manifest.

They may manifest as non-violent, but illegal subversion.

They may manifest as violent, illegal insurgency.

They may manifest by a decision to form governments, build armies, and declare independence as a new state.

In that last case, I believe the state-on-state conflict can be approached as war, but that in the first two that it is best approached as civil emergency. I also believe that once the rebel "state" is defeated one may well find them self with either a subversion or an insurgency on their hands, and that they should keep that in mind as they fight the war, and be prepared to transition to MSCA-based COIN practices to deal with the subsequent civil emergency.

(Oh, has to "staying on the reservation," I've always held in higher regard those who refused to submit to the rule of their oppressors and stayed off the reservation, than those who surrendered everything they stood for to accept a role cast for them by those same oppressors.)